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Gender discrimination is the maltreatment of an individual based on their sex. This form of discrimination most commonly affects women. It also may affect homosexual and transgendered men. Whereas women represent approximately fifty percent of the global population, they are woefully underrepresented in a variety of fields including leadership roles. Gender discrimination takes the form of unequal pay for equal work, unwanted sexual advances, demands for sexual favors in exchange for workplace advancement, discrimination during pregnancy, and general unfavorable views towards women based on their roles as mothers.
Gender discrimination exists in even the most advanced, enlightened, and egalitarian of societies. It is not only men that discriminate against women, but also may be women who hold unfavorable views of women and womanhood. The effects are far reaching and have many consequences. Some of the consequences are purely economical insofar as a woman will receive less pay for equal work, while other effects are psychological and involve the way the woman is able to see herself and her role in life. Although great leaps forward have been made in the reduction of sexism in western countries, the problem still persists. Poverty, violence, unequal sharing of household responsibilities, family caregiving responsibilities, and employment discrimination all place constant obstacles to female achievement in society (Zucker & Bay-Cheng, 2010). Objectification of women leads to significant detrimental affects on the psychology of women and girls throughout life and the current ideals of womanhood create unrealistic expectations that place a real burden on females regarding things as diverse as self-damaging behaviors, eating disorders, and smoking to remain thin (Zucker & Bay-Cheng, 2010).
In the United States approximately 47% of all medical school students are female, while only 35% of practicing physicians and surgeons are women. Similarly, in Canada the number of female medical school students is 57%, while practicing female physicians only make up only 36% of the medical workforce (Women in Medicine, 2012). There are potentially many causative factors for this, including the desire to start familial life and falling out of the workforce, however, we hypothesize that gender discrimination plays a role in female physician burnout and is a major factor leading to the disparity seen between female medical graduates and practicing female physicians in the United States and Canada.
Cichocka, et al, in a study conducted amongst 96 female polish professionals and Gender Studies graduate students found that female attitudes to gender discrimination were dependent on who was the target of discrimination – even amongst self-reported feminists (2013). Using questionnaires distributed to students at the University of Warsaw, the researchers sought to ascertain the attitudes of these feminists to discrimination against women of various political orientations. Participants read short profiles of discrimination and reviewed CVs and cover letters of similarly qualified women, who were manipulated to obviously indicate a political orientation. If the victim of gender discrimination was presented as a feminist she was more likely seen to suffer from gender discrimination than if the victim was presented as conservative. Indeed, the action was seen as more ‘unfair’ if the target of discrimination was a feminist than if she was not a feminist. They further found that amongst their sample population, there was less compassion to victims of discrimination if they were not viewed as feminists. This experiment was interesting as a measure of group psychology rather than a definitive statement of gender discrimination. However, it showed that even amongst self-reported feminists, gender discrimination existed – it was just not based strictly on gender but also on political orientation. The conclusion reached by the experimenters was in relation to the attitudes of feminists to conservative politicians such as Sarah Palin and sought to explain why conservative female candidates suffer a great polling deficit amongst feminists. In sum, powerful women who do not fall in line with the group-think of feminist ideology suffer similar gender discrimination as less powerful women. This study has some major notable limitations. Firstly, the selected population is young and tends towards significantly more liberal views than would be expected in an older population. A second limitation is the fact that it was conducted in Poland. Poland has a unique history having been under the totalitarian sphere of communism and it is not an easy task to extrapolate political attitudes in former eastern-bloc countries to the rest of the western world.
Leaper & Arias conducted groundbreaking research into feminist identity and coping with sexism in 2011. They sampled 169 undergraduate women from diverse ethnic backgrounds to assess their experiences and gender-related biases. Various factors were found to contribute to identification as a feminist, such as social gender identity, exposure to feminism, and egalitarian attitudes. Further analysis sought to test the contribution that this feminist identity has towards cognitive appraisal of coping responses to sexual harassment. The researchers ultimately found that feminist identity has three main components including: experiences of sexism and feminism, gender-related belief systems, and stereotyped notions of feminism. Each of these factors contributed independently to the formation of feminist identification. Furthermore, feminist identification, either publicly or privately, were both linked to seeking social support, but only amongst white European American women. The authors believe that this is because, unlike their racial minority sisters, these women are not used to things such as racial discrimination and therefore are shocked by the appearance of sexual discrimination and seek out social support as a consequence. Women who identified as feminists were found more likely to positively view confronting sexual harassment than non-feminist identified women. This analysis only bore fruit with public identification as a feminist as opposed to private identification, likely because the former shows a stronger commitment to feminist causes. A major limitation of this study was that it used a convenience sample or predominantly heterosexual women at a very liberal university and the experiences of these women are not easily translated to the rest of the population. Also, different modalities of feminism were not distinguished and reported feminists were just lumped together without any understanding of various strains of thought within the feminist rubric. Furthermore, the study only used self-reporting which is perhaps subject to biases. Finally, the only item considered by the surveyors was confronting perpetrators and seeking social support as possible responses to perceived sexual harassment.
In a study based in Japan, Yamazaki, et al, found that while the numbers of female physicians graduating in Japan are increasing the females tend to resign from their positions shortly after child birth (2011). In some fields, such as obstetrics and gynecology, female physicians take up some 50% of the training positions. This is particularly problematic due to physician shortages that Japan and many western countries are facing. The researchers link the physician shortage problem with the fact that nine years after graduation only 75% of female graduates remain as employed, practicing physicians. Several factors that have been cited for this are the difficulties of childbirth and childrearing, as well as the fact that in Japan, household responsibilities are traditionally the woman’s provenance. Using anonymous questionnaires distributed by mail to female graduates of Juntendo University School of Medicine, 646 females contacted and 249 responded to the questionnaire. The questionnaire used quantitative and qualitative data that asked about the respondent’s thoughts about female medical resignation using a free-form comments section. Recently, some Japanese hospitals have introduced child support services in an effort to rectify the problem, however, the study found that female physicians with children tended to be more aware of sexual inequality than female doctors without children. Some of the researchers findings included high levels of stress about family responsibilities, few options for child care, guilty feeling regarding motherhood, male dominated medical profession in a traditional society, and complicated conditions that make a pregnant, or women with young children a burden on their colleagues, as reasons for the relatively high number of female physician resignations. Limitations of this study include the fact that it surveyed only alumnae from one medical school and only surveyed physicians who continued to work as opposed to the physicians who dropped out of the labor market.
In order to assess the role that gender discrimination has in the medical work force we propose the following experiment. Similar to the study performed by Yamazki, et al, detailed questionnaires should be sent to female graduates of medical schools. Minimal qualitative data should be sought though, and the majority will be quantitative. Salient questions to ask would be number of children the respondent has, the age that respondent first had children, how many times respondent has changed jobs as a practicing physician, how many job interviews the respondent has been to, how many of those job interviews asked about her marital status and motherhood status, how many acceptances did the physician receive after indicating to the interviewers that she was a mother. Questions such as these will not uncover the causes of sexual discrimination but will be a good indicator as to the effects of womanhood and mothering has on the potential for employment. Furthermore, this can be combined with qualitative data for understanding respondent attitudes towards discrimination and their perceptions of the work force. Analytical methods would be varied and would include grounded theories where similar questions are coded alike and differing weights would be placed on various factors depending on their correlation to actual gender discrimination. Content analysis would also be used in order to review the qualitative data for particular patterns highlighting gender bias. Few ethical issues would arise, as the surveys would remain anonymous, would not seek any identifying data, and would be entirely voluntary.
Gender discrimination remains a significant problem in society generally, and the work force in particular. With the increasing need for qualified physicians worldwide, the gap between female medical graduates, and female practicing physicians is creating an untenable situation. As the research has shown, negative attitudes towards women are pervasive amongst both men and women, and are often more nuanced than simply a result of gender. Often times, political attitudes and economics also come into play when dealing with the etiology of gender discrimination and these too must be addressed if we are to overcome this blight on human thought. With further research, perhaps we will be able to find the underlying causes for this gap and rectify the dual problems of sexual discrimination and physician shortages.
Works Cited:
Cichocka, A., et al. (2013). Threats to Feminist Identity and Reactions to Gender
Discrimination. Sex Roles, 68, 605-619. DOI: 10.1007/s11199-013-0272-5
Leaper, C. and Arias, D.M. (2011). College Women’s Feminist Identity: A
Multidimensional Analysis with Implications for Coping with Sexism. Sex Roles, 64(7-8), 475-490. DOI: 10.1007/s11199-011-9936-1
Yamazaki, Y., et al (2011). Difficulties Facing Physician Mothers in Japan. Tohoku
Women in Medicine, 2012. Available from: http://www.catalyst.org/knowledge/women-
medicine. [22 May 2013]
Zucker, A.N., and Bay-Cheng, L.Y. (2010). Minding the Gap Between Feminist Identity
and Attitudes: The Behavioral and Ideological Divide Between Feminists and Non-Labelers. Journal of Personlity, 78(6), 1895-1924. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-6494.2010.00673.x
